[Pdns-users] Hardware Questions

[bert hubert]

On Tue, Mar 09, 2010 at 10:39:43AM -0800, Zane Thomas wrote:
> Assuming a reasonably performing backend (mysql?) what hardware will be
> required for powerdns to answer 70,000q/sec of "normal traffic" (I'm not
> sure I know how to define that!).

It depends on what number of zones and records you have. In addition, there
are multiple ways of looking at this. 

For example, there is a very large organization using PowerDNS Authoritative
Server fully cached, so they set the cache-ttl to 86400 or so. If they make
changes, they use pdns_control over the network to invalidate small parts of
the cache to propagate changes. They achieve (I think) around 40kqps on 30
million records on a single server. In your case, you'd need around two
reasonably modern servers to meet your 70kqps target (dual or quad core, any
recent server will do).

If you do less than 30 million records spread out over 3 million zones, this
may require even less, but you need two servers anyhow.

To offer 'worst case 70kqps' performance (so, not a single repeated query)
requires a mysql layout that can do around 100kqps. This may require a dozen
servers for non-trivial amounts of zone data. You might be able to get away
with less if things are set up correctly.

Real life is somewhere in between a dozen and 2 servers, for large amounts
of zones/records.

For reference, a 'reasonably modern server' might be a dual core 2.5GHz Xeon
with 4G of memory, running a 64-bit UNIX.

	Bert